Graduate Students Across Canada Celebrate OA Week

By
Kimalee PhillipChair, National Graduate Caucus of the Canadian Federation of Students

Published Oct 26, 2011, 3:28pm

Graduate students at Canadian universities joined their international counterparts in celebrating the 5th Open Access Week. The graduate members of the National Graduate Caucus (NGC) of the Canadian Federation of Students support principles of Open Access as they are aligned with values of access to high quality, peer-reviewed scholarly publications regardless of wealth or location. Graduate student unions of the NGC will be working with their on-campus librarians to support Open Access repositories as well as grants to support students and faculty to publish in Open Access journals.

Graduate students have taken the lead in hosting panel discussions, workshops, movie screenings, forums and other events to bring public attention to the issue and to illustrate the relevance to students and the broader public. Long-time advocates for increases to public research funding, graduate students within the Canadian Federation of Students believe that research produced for the public good should be made more easily accessible to taxpayers.

Outreach materials such as posters, buttons, bookmarks and webcasts have been made available to graduate students across Canada. Under the broad messaging that no one should be denied access to the research they need, students will participate in Open Access week events from October 24th – 30th.

The National Graduate Caucus is a separate caucus within the Canadian Federation of Students representing over 70,000 students at 31 campuses across Canada.